Highly radioactive: 1,000 gallons of nuclear waste leak in Washington every year

Six tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are leaking an estimated 1,000 gallons of nuclear waste each year. And with billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts about to occur, the US government may not have the funds to clean up the mess.

Three underground tanks at the Washington-based nuclear
reservation were last week found to be leaking at an
initially-estimated rate of 300 gallons of waste per year. But
Department of Energy investigators this week discovered three
additional tanks were leaking, bringing the total estimated annual
waste to 1,000 gallons per year.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which was established in 1943
as part of the Manhattan Project, is mostly decommissioned but
still holds two-thirds of the nation’s radioactive waste in its 177
tanks. The millions of gallons of radioactive material, which still
remain from Cold War-era plutonium production, are highly dangerous
and are quickly dripping into American soil.

Leaks were discovered years ago, but the Department of Energy
said the problem had been solved when it was initially discovered
in 2005.

“These tanks, we were told by the federal government, were
stabilized years ago. We know now that is not the case,”
Washington state Governor Jay Inslee told reporters on Wednesday.
“The federal government has a legally binding obligation to both
remove this material and to make sure we curb this
leakage.”

But Inslee also said that the government currently has no
available technology to stop the leaks and is unable to stop the
radioactive material from flowing into the earth. Officials are
currently discussing possible methods of extracting the waste from
the soil, but coming up with a solution could take weeks or even
months, Inslee said.

The government estimates that already 1 million gallons of
radioactive liquid have leaked from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation
– yet still, Inslee claims the material poses no immediate threat
to public safety.

Meanwhile many question government's spending on the clean up
efforts.

“At the time of the sequester, taxpayers spend $2 billion per
year just maintaining the cleanup operation,” Michio Kaku, a
physics professor at the City University of New York, told CBS
News. “Then it was revealed that hundreds of gallons of
high-level toxic waste have been leaking over the last several
years right into the ground. Eventually into the groundwater and
maybe the Columbia River.”

The radioactive waste contains the most dangerous chemicals
known to man, including plutonium, enriched uranium, nitric acid
and solvents.

“To get this into perspective, to get your head around this,
imagine 80 Olympic-sized swimming pools containing the most toxic
substance known to science of which two Olympic-size swimming pools
have leaked right into the ground and eventually into the water
table and, perhaps, even into people's drinking water,” Kaku
added.

Governor Inslee believes that the $85 billion in automatic
government spending cuts, set to go into effect on March 1, would
make it more difficult for the government to clean up the waste.
The Department of Energy estimates that it would take $114.8
billion to clean up the waste “before the end of this
century,” Inslee said.

With an inadequate budget for the cleanup effort and no
technology to stop the leaks, the area around the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation could soon be in grave danger – especially if the waste
makes its way into Americans’ drinking water.